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Archive | January, 2008

A really unusual bunch of friends

Check out the "where did you hear about us" choices from Carbonite (which is a great service to back up your computer automatically).  They’ve got quite an unusual bunch of friends! More important, they take the word of mouth question seriously, and they know exactly where there referrals are coming from.  You should be able […]

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Please, please read this book before your next speech

Most executives make truly, horribly, awful presentations.  Even when you say the right things, your slides are just plain crap. Buy Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.  It is the most concise, useful, helpful book ever written about doing great PowerPoint. 2 hours with this book will help you sell more, make you case, get more […]

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Innovations in online shopping

I just keynoted the Shop.org Strategy & Innovation Forum.  The most interesting people in the world of online retail are here, speakers and attendees.  You can follow the sessions on the official conference blog here.  Josh Hallett is leading/doing the live blogging with his usual excellent skill, and the photography too. Full blog  Coverage of […]

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Will a London cabbie lie for money?

I hope I’m misreading this situation… A firm called Taxi Promotions UK is paying London cabbies to talk up their clients in what appears to be an ill-conceived stealth marketing campaign. (Full article from the International Herald Tribune.)  Cabbies get free vacations and other rewards in exchange for promoting them to unsuspecting passengers. But… as […]

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Privacy: How it should be done

Cardscan sent out a wonderful email to customers, with a no-BS, elegant statement on privacy: Dear Andy, You may have read recently about some privacy issues concerning popular social networking services and web sites.  We want to take a moment to reassure you — as a valued CardScan user — that we take privacy issues […]

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How to get a job

We’re hiring at GasPedal and pouring through resumes.  Most candidates shoot themselves with silly mistakes. Even senior-level executives. If you really want to get a job, follow these tips. 1. Write an amazing cover letter.  If you can’t write a simple, persuasive letter, then the rest of your credentials just don’t matter. You can’t represent […]

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Ty Inc.: Are you evil, selfish, or stupid?

Here’s a company walking right into a word of mouth disaster.  From the Chicago Tribune: Ty Inc. refuses Illinois’ request to pull lead-tainted doll from stores In what could trigger the first test of Illinois’ strict law against lead in toys, a major toymaker is refusing to pull a popular, but tainted, doll from store […]

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Squidnote: Viral tool using smart viral strategies

SquidNote is a cool ecard site.  Instead of sending a single ecard, you can forward it to a bunch of people who can all sign it electronically. Think about those office get-well cards – instead of doing on paper, you just send it around and everyone adds their bit.  See it here. What I really […]

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Working with bloggers instead of creating your own

J.C. Penney wanted to draw traffic to their site for fall shopping.  Blogs are perfect for this … but they didn’t have an experienced blog team.  Instead, they worked with Federated Media, a network of independent bloggers, to create a new site that reprinted the blogs’ content. Results were fantastic: They now show up in […]

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